The R&B singer Cassie Ventura, a longtime girlfriend of Sean "Diddy" Combs, broke down on the witness stand Tuesday as she testified she felt "worthless" joining in on the drug-fueled sex marathons that he called "freak offs."
"I felt pretty horrible about myself. I felt disgusting. I was humiliated. I didn't have the words at the time to tell him how I felt. And I couldn't talk to anyone about it," Ventura, who is eight months pregnant, told a jury in Manhattan, breaking into tears as she sat opposite Combs during his criminal sex-trafficking and racketeering trial.
Ventura testified that she did not want to have sex with the male escorts that she says Combs recruited for the sessions, but she said she wanted to be intimate with Combs. She craved one-on-one time with Combs, and freak offs, she said, were "the only time I could get."
"I wanted him to know that doing this made me feel horrible. It made me feel worthless," Ventura said, adding that he was "pretty dismissive" when she told Combs how terrible she felt, including in emails and texts.
She called him "Pop Pop" in these exchanges — at his request, she said, after he asked her to call him "what I call my grandfather."
Jurors were shown photographs of six men Ventura said were paid by Combs to have sex with her "almost weekly," and sometimes two at a time.
Their names included "Dave," "Jules," and "Daniel," she said, as the images were shown one by one.
"I knew him as 'The Punisher," she said of the photo of one male escort hired "a couple of times."
Ventura said she took drugs, including Molly and Ecstasy, to numb herself to what was happening.
She described in graphic terms the encounters that she said would leave the hotel furniture and linens stained with blood, urine, candle wax, and baby oil.
The air would often be thick with the smell of body odor and the smoke from a half-dozen Glade candles, she said.
"I hated it," she told the jury, calling the hired men "strangers."
Early in her testimony, Ventura told the jury that she loved Combs and felt a sense of duty to join in the freak offs, which are at the core of the indictment against Combs.
"I was just in love and wanted to make him happy," Ventura said.
Ventura, who dated Combs from 2007 to 2018, described herself as a "people pleaser" and told the eight men and four women on the jury that Combs was often violent with her.
She testified that arguments with Combs would regularly result in physical abuse.
"He would bash me in my head, knock me over, drag me, kick me, stomp me in the head," Ventura said, adding that Combs beat her "too frequently."
"I would get knocked in my forehead, busted lips, swollen lips, black eyes," Ventura said, "bruises all over my body."
When he became violent, "His eyes would go black," she told the jury of Combs.
Ventura is the prosecution's key witness in the case.
Prosecutors allege that for two decades, Combs led a criminal enterprise that involved the sex trafficking of Ventura and an anonymous Jane Doe.
Ventura's climb to the witness stand — she is eight months pregnant and wore a stretchy brown dress and mustard-colored overcoat — came amid the first time she and Combs were in the same room since 2018. That's when she attended the funeral of Kim Porter, Combs' long-term girlfriend and the mother to four of his children.
Ventura told the jury that it was soon after she started dating Combs that she learned he had sudden, violent mood swings.
"Make a wrong face and the next thing I knew I was getting hit in the face," she told the jurors.
He would lash out "if I wasn't smiling at him, if I didn't look the certain way that he liked," or if she was being "bratty," she said.
"Watch your mouth," she said he'd tell her if he thought she spoke out of turn.
Ventura's appearance followed a whirlwind first day of the trial.
On Monday, the jury heard opening statements and testimony from the first two witnesses, including an exotic dancer who testified he was repeatedly paid to have sex with Ventura as Combs watched.
The prosecutor Emily Johnson told the jury Combs used "lies, drugs, threats, and violence to force and coerce" Ventura and another woman into "freak offs."
Plenty of bathroom breaks
Prosecutors say Ventura, 38, will be on the stand testifying against Combs, 55, for most of this week.
She's due to give birth next month to her third child with her husband, Alex Fine, a source said. She's set to be given breaks every 90 minutes during her testimony.
Fine may be called to the stand as a defense witness, Combs' attorney Teny Geragos told the judge, who is allowing him to watch part of her testimony.
If Fine is asked to take the stand, he'll be asked to impeach the testimony of his wife, Geragos said outside the jury's presence moments before Ventura began testifying.
Fine may be asked about "several very threatening messages" in which he spoke of "beating the F-word out of" Combs, the lawyer said.
The criminal indictment against Combs accuses him of making Ventura engage "in commercial sex acts as a result of force, fraud, and coercion" throughout their decadelong relationship.
Prosecutors have alleged that the commercial sex acts involved the so-called freak offs.
Ventura's account of abuse could be bolstered by security video appearing to show Combs beating Ventura in the hallway of the now closed InterContinental hotel in Los Angeles. Prosecutors say the video shows Ventura struggling to leave the hotel after a freak off held there in 2016. Jurors were shown this video on Monday.
When shown a still from that video on Tuesday in court, Ventura told jurors: "We were having an encounter that we called a freak off."
During the first year of the relationship, "Sean proposed to me this sexual encounter that he called voyeurism, where he would watch me have a sexual encounter with a third man, specifically another man," Ventura testified.
Ventura said she initially agreed to a freak off because she "felt a sense of responsibility, with Sean sharing something like that with me."
"Also, I loved him so much," Ventura said.
Combs apologized after the video surfaced in 2023, and his lawyers have conceded he was violent during the relationship. But they have alleged that Ventura was also violent. They say all sexual encounters were consensual.
"There was hitting on both sides," Combs' attorney Marc Agnifilo said in court on Friday. Ventura's lawyer has declined to comment on this allegation.
Since his arrest in September, Combs has maintained that he's never sexually abused anyone.
If convicted on charges of sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy, Combs could spend the rest of his life behind bars.
This story was updated with additional testimony throughout the day Tuesday.
If you are a survivor of sexual assault, you can call the National Sexual Assault Hotline (1-800-656-4673) or visit its website to receive confidential support.
